Aught, no. 15 (2006)


Crag Hill

cut the price they offered


                                     They thought of themselves

               they logged, mined, or sought

                            plundering the river of its resources
                                                             pound-net men and fish-wheel owner

               They forged
                         in the dual sense
                                                        both the sea and the land

                                   a nature they knew through work

               They lay out on
                                   suffering hardships

From nature’s bounty

 

 

it was wealth in scarce


more distant peoples or dentalium
                                             down river where related males lived
                                            (prestige activities: slave raids)
             The whites partially changed

There was a final geography of the human body
          an exterior geography of signs
                                 a flattened head
                      A dentalium shell

                                      they can mark our bodies

A sustained note of bewilderment

                            the Indians triggered it

                     Many of them, indeed, had lost

 

 

suspended lights


result that was mad. Like many kind
                        sane from the inside. 

             Emerson’s railway back to nature
             was a journey that most Americans
                                       took new

                    a dream of liberation
  
the hope of transformation through

                                        collective self-deceptions
                      dreams as transferred
                                                               fusion

original passion is

                                            the brightness of the day

 

 

when the returning runs passed

should salmon then surrender
         
                            there was public controversy
the cost

                     new dams
                                                   additional dam

additional dams
                                 three dams
   
                before the dams

                                                             nine dams


Copyright © 2006, by the author. All rights reserved.
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